Miss Belize continues fundraising drive
For more than three decades Belize has been sending young women to participate in the Miss Universe Pageant. But the closest any of our contestants have come to winning the popular event was in 1974. That was the year Sarita Acosta made it to the top ten. Thirty years later the country has yet to witness a repeat performance, but that fact hasn’t stopped organizers from hoping. National Executive Director of Pageants Belize Margaret Johnson is confident that this year’s queen, twenty-five year old Maria Jeffery, stands a very good chance of wearing the international crown.
Margaret Johnson, Natl. Executive Dir., Pageants Belize
“I love a competition, I don’t run from a competition but at the same time, this year we don’t have Trinidad participating, we don’t have Panama participating, we don’t have Germany participating and we do not have several other countries participating. Am I mad? No, because they usually make the semi-finals and it creates a space open for our Miss Belize. Panama is in Central America that is one space more for us. I’ll take it.”
Jacqueline Godwin, Reporting
But as confidence doesn’t pay the bills and tonight Miss Belize needs money and clothes to make a good showing in Mexico City in May. This week Johnson and Jeffery have been pounding the pavement asking for public for financial support, starting with the entry fee of ten thousand dollars which has to be paid by Sunday.
“How come we have reached this point and what was happening before? How come, it seems as if no money or no effort was being made to raise this money and now we are trying to do everything at last minute?”
Margaret Johnson
“I do not see it as being last minute. I see maybe the response is last minute because we have been trying for sometime now. We have tried to raise the funds as much as possible on our own instead of having to beg everybody because we know it is the same community, the same business that get tapped every year.”
Even though fundraising efforts fell short, according to Johnson, another reason Jeffrey can do well is because unlike the three former Miss Belize contestants, she is actually eligible to compete.
Margaret Johnson
“It sounds rather crude to be able to for it to come out like that. The girls that went to represent us did not know that, I was helping them over in Houston, Texas; I did not know that. So the girls represented, they went there with their hearts of knowing that they were representing Belize, so you cannot really put that on them. It is a matter of reading, there’s a lot of reading instructions you have to do.”
Jacqueline Godwin
“The fine print?”
Margaret Johnson
“Yes. As a director we have to go through and read all of these things and it is not until I go through and read all of these things, I am finding out. Take for example Miss Leila Pandy. Leila is an absolutely wonderful contestant, absolutely a wonderful representative for Belize you know. But when I read through the thing and it says if you have sent your delegate to a pageant before, first of all you have selected her to go to a Miss Universe Pageant, so you do not carry her to another pageant because it is like using the name Miss Universe, which is a trademark to do somebody else’s business. And what made it even worse is that Leila won. Now when you win you have another title you are carrying. You cannot go to Miss Universe with another title. … There are certain stipulations and things you have to follow and why people think we can just bypass them and nobody is going to notice they notice.”
Other major snafus have including contestants that were too old or sending a queen that didn’t actually compete locally. But tonight Maria Jeffrey is hoping Belizeans will be able to forget the past to give her a chance.
Maria Jeffery, Miss Belize Universe
“We do need the support. We need to raise at least ten thousand dollars just for the entrance fee and we are asking for the support. I mean I know I have the potential to bring back something very positive for Belize, for Belize on a whole, the country, not for myself. I mean of course, I get some pleasure out of it as well because just to be there will be just fantastic, but this is for the country, for people to get to know the country of Belize and I cannot do it without the support of Belizeans”
Jacqueline Godwin for News Five.
This weekend, Johnson and Jeffery will be in San Pedro for a series of fund raising drives including a radiothon on Reef Radio. If all goes well, Jeffery is scheduled to leave for Mexico in two weeks.
